Cat Fight In The Kitchen-Wattpad Rant

The Male Best Friend and Gossip

I’m sitting at this hospital and they’re letting me watch House MD in the waiting area. They don’t see how problematic this could potentially be…nor do they seem to realize the irony. I think they’re trying to send the subliminal message diagnose yourself.

Well played, hospital. Well played.

Anyway, I have a little while so I thought I’d rant again.

How about we talk about: The Male Best Friend and Gossip

I’ve read a lot of conversations between the female MC and her male best friend and they just gab like two girls. And I don’t have that experience very often with my best friend.

The most we gossip about is sports or music…not so much people we know.

Although, I’ll give him credit, because he tries to entertain my paranoia.

But I don’t think we’ve ever had a conversation about how we dislike a certain girl because she’s just a slut or we dislike another guy because he’s a player.

In fact, I don’t really know of anyone he just genuinely dislikes. (Although I have many people I dislike.

Occasionally, if he knows I’m upset about something or if he knows I’m angry with someone, he lets me vent and throws in little comments like “he’s a dick,” or “she’s tacky and I hate her” (I taught him to say that…because of School of Rock).

But it’s never “oh my gosh, remember when she dated so-and-so and then broke up with him to date his best friend, but then he started dating her sister?” I’ve never had a conversation with him like that.

My college roommate, yes. But not my best friend.

He’s pretty honest when I rant and ask if he’s listening. It’s always “yeah, I’m not gonna lie. I didn’t hear a word you just said.”

One time I gave him this beautiful speech about how I felt about this girl and her mother were spreading these really nasty rumors about me (apparently I’m fake and I’ve had two abortions (how creative right?)) and how annoyed I was and how much it upset me. And the best I got was “whaddya want me to say? She’s a bitch. If people believe her, that’s their problem.”

Then a girl friend from work said sweet things like “oh, honey, you’re better than that.” Or “Sweety, you can’t let people like that get under your skin.” Or “They’re just bitter old bitches.” And then she said bad things about that girl and it made me feel better (because I’m a bad person).

If I want my best friend to be heartfelt I either have to give him a script or give him alcohol. (I swear…he’s an alcoholic and he loves it so much. I guess he thinks it makes him a philosopher.)

My point being, guys are generally bad at gossip. Not always, but more often than not.

I’m not even afraid to generalize a little and simply say that guys don’t listen. My brother doesn’t listen. My dad is usually playing Tetris on his phone, so he doesn’t listen. And my best friend is always really present in whatever he does, but he just cannot pay attention for that long.

And that’s not even half the guys I know that don’t listen.

So I get really tired of reading the entire gossip scenes. I get bored gossiping.

My best friend and I don’t gossip that much anymore; we talk about our days or something boring like that.

For instance, I told him how I watch way more Law & Order than I have time for (people don’t believe me when I tell them that I don’t sleep. That’s what I do with my nights), but anyway, now I’m fairly convinced I could be a detective.

And he tells me about all the people he gets to meet and work with and all the cool pieces he’s written and all this stuff that I’m insanely jealous of.

Or, more often than not, we talk a lot about music (because that’s kind of his job now). But last week we had a three day conversation about Fall Out Boy’s Folie À Deux, and how it was actually such a great album.

This was after the two week conversation about how Tom Petty is the man, Steve Miller Band had such a mellow vibe, The Eagles had some killer work with Joe Walsh, Led Zeppelin was great no matter what Townshend thought, and a lot of other stuff I don’t have time to list.

And we had a conversation when I named the stray cat at my house Jimi after Jimi Hendrix, because he’s pretty psychedelic. And when he named his new dog Joe (although he refuses to acknowledge he did it subconsciously after Joe Walsh and Joe Perry.)

But we don’t do the girl talk about all these people we went to high school with. And I would label that as just a high school thing, but we didn’t do it that much while we were there.

And we sure as hell don’t have the legitimate girl talks. It kind of creeps me out when I even see it in real life where girls just tell some guy “ugh, I just started my period”. I mean, he knows, but I never just say it…but I don’t say that to my girlfriends…so…I’ll leave that a little untouched.

However, I have been training my best friend’s little brother to be the perfect boyfriend (because I do social experiments because I’m a terrible person), and he’s coming along nicely.

I’ve got him to watch Mean Girls with me and he actually likes it. He texts me lines from it all the time and I think that’s the greatest thing ever.

He also has this unflinching ability to watch Disney movies with me. And my best friend is always telling me not to feminize his kid. But I love it.

Still, my best friend’s younger brother really doesn’t like gossip.

I don’t really like gossip.

Maybe we could not waste so many chapters on dumb teenage gossip?

Make the conversations about the character’s goals or personality. Not just how much they hate the supposed antagonist simply because the two don’t have the same opinion on everything.

And realize that guys are less likely to listen than girls.